Companies have never been more dependent on information technology. IT underpins business services and provides the platform for new business opportunities.
It can be easy to forget how much IT is part of our lives until it fails. Just take a look at an average day.
You wake up and check the news and weather on your favorite site or app. Perhaps you order an Uber to get to work while placing a mobile order at your favorite coffee shop. Maybe you stop for some cash at an ATM or use your credit card to make a purchase. You get the picture.
Every industry sector heavily relies upon IT, including communications, education, entertainment, financial services, manufacturing, government, healthcare, transportation, and others.
On July 8, 2022, one of Canada's major wireless and internet service providers suffered an extended outage due to a failure in its change management process.
Roger's Chief executive Tony Staffieri said the outage followed "a maintenance update in our core network," which "caused some of our routers to malfunction."
This 15-hour outage affected approximately 30 percent of the Canadian population, disrupted 911 services, caused outages to the ATM network, canceled major summer concerts, raised the ire of the Canadian government, and much more.
This outage was the second major outage for this company in approximately 15 months. In April 2021, they had a significant outage also due to a software issue.
These outages significantly impacted the company's reputation and had financial implications due to customer rebates and a potential class action lawsuit.
So how does a company suffer two significant disruptions in 15 months?
I believe it's due to poor IT Service Management processes.
Why ITSM is Important
IT Service Management is a set of processes, practices, procedures, and tools designed to support the availability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of a company's service to its customers.
A functional ITSM program improves incident resolution, ensures changes go in smoothly, and provides disaster recovery and business continuity while maintaining customer satisfaction.
ITSM also goes much further by improving how business designs, builds, and operate new services that can enhance their competitive advantage.
Benefits of ITSM
The benefits of ITSM are many. The foremost benefit is better alignment of IT with the business's goals. These goals may include the digitization of business processes and services. This alignment requires IT to be an equal partner instead of a cost center. Other benefits include:
- Improved reliability and availability of services
- Cost-effective delivery of services
- Mitigation of risk
- Better customer experience
- Enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of IT staff
Given the importance of Information Technology, businesses should implement a robust ITSM program to ensure reliability, mitigate risk, and lay the foundation for future services.
